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Kevin Murphy
Kevin Wagner Murphy (born November 3, 1956) is a former Mystery Science Theater 3000 writer, actor, director, and puppeteer. He is known to Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans as the second voice of Tom Servo and portraying Professor Bobo. Biography After graduating University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in Journalism and an M.A. in Directing for the Stage and Screen, Murphy took a position at local station KTMA. While there he also did production work on Jim Mallon's 1984 film Blood Hook. The relationship with Mallon led to his working on MST3k from its inception. Mystery Science Theater 3000 From the start of MST3k Murphy worked behind the scenes as a writer. He also occasionally appeared on screen in a variety of guest roles. Beginning in 1990 Murphy took up the role of Tom Servo following the departure of original puppeteer and voice Josh Weinstein. He first appeared in the second (national) season's debut episode Rocketship X-M. Starting in season 8 he also appeared on-screen as the masked character Professor Bobo, appearing from the season's first episode Revenge of the Creature. He continued both roles until the final episode of the series, Diabolik. Notably, upon taking up the voice of Tom Servo he was anonymously mailed a six foot long banner reading simply "I hate Tom Servo's new voice", which he then displayed in his office. and Trace Beaulieu.]] Post MST3k After the cancellation of the series Murphy took up a project to see a movie a day in 2001. He completed the task–seeing over 400 movies on four continents–and wrote about the experience in the book A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey. A television series based on the premise was planned by an unknown network, but abandoned. Murphy is noticeably absent from Joel Hodgson's Cinematic Titanic and the The Giant Gila Monster reunion "bonus sketch" 2008 that appeared on that film's single disc Rhino Entertainment release. In 2007, Murphy joined Mike Nelson and Bill Corbett as part of the straight-to-DVD riff series The Film Crew. The group fizzled after releasing just four movies. He was also a part of the short lived Timmy Big Hands online webzine. He can currently be heard as a part of Mike Nelson's audio commentary service RiffTrax. Originally appearing as a "guest riffer" for a number of movies, both he and Bill Corbett became full time members of the show with Mike around 2007. Personal life Murphy continues to reside in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area with his wife, Jane. When asked in 2008 about any possible animosity between Murphy and the rest of the original cast of Mystery Science Theater, Joel Hodgson said; "I can't really speak for him. We saw him at ComicCon, and we did the Mystery Science Theater 20th Anniversary panel, and he seemed totally happy to be there, willing to be there, but he's doing Cinematic Titanic." Appearances Regular Roles *Tom Servo (1990-1999) *Professor Bobo (1997-1999) Guest Appearances *Robert Plant - The Amazing Colossal Man *Jerry the Mole Man (credited as "Roadie") - Gamera vs. Zigra *Patches the Leech - Attack of the Giant Leeches *Kevin the Cop - The Indestructible Man *William Conrad - The Human Duplicators *Harry Carey (voice) - The Painted Hills *Santa Claus - Santa Claus, San Francisco International *Abe from Illinois (voice) - The Dead Talk Back *Kitten With the Whip - Kitten with a Whip *Ilya Murametz - The Sword and the Dragon *Ted - The Amazing Transparent Man *Wade the Nanite - Revenge of the Creature *Emperor Hadrian - The Thing That Couldn't Die *Digger Smolken (voice) - The Undead *Space Mother (voice) - The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies *Callipygeas - Prince of Space, The Horror of Party Beach, Devil Doll, Invasion of the Neptune Men *Roger Whitaker - The Pumaman *Fortenbras - Hamlet Personal quotes * "We started seeking out people in the community who could be on TV, and one of them was Joel Hodgson." * "There was one submission called Demon Rugsuckers From Mars, or maybe just Rugsuckers From Mars. [WIRED Magazine's Editor's note: It’s actually titled 'Over-Sexed Rugsuckers From Mars.] It’s about vacuum cleaners. And there was a scene with this dorky bearded fellow making graphic love to a vacuum cleaner. That was the one time I thought, what the hell am I doing with my life?"'' * "We always encouraged people to share tapes of the show with each other. But the online thing was born of itself. The whole newsgroup that started was self-generated. We didn’t have anything to do with it." * "When you have something successful, it starts to look like '''The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Jim Mallon and Joel ran the show, and I don’t think they liked each other at all." * "It began getting difficult when USA Network started exercising more control over the Sci-Fi Channel. And then we picked up these fucking production executives from the network. We had these bitter, dry, humorless trolls in charge of our show. And they were giving us notes. And they were insisting on our having a story arc. What the hell do you want with a story arc? This is a puppet show." External links * WIRED Magazine|Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral History of a TV Masterpiece Murphy, Kevin Murphy, Kevin Category:Crew who played multiple roles Category:MST3K Directors